Technical difficulties on chickenandhowie.com

Last night I found a pretty big little bug on the chickenandhowie.com website. It's come to my attention that several weeks ago, while I was making some little cosmetic tweak, I accidentally saved over the "Emily According to Brian" page with one of my work pages that I used when I was designing the site.

Because of this, instead of the beautiful little description of me that Brian had written, you have several paragraphs of "Lorem Ipsum". Lorem Ipsum is a tool that graphic designers use so they can work on design before they have the actual text in hand. At a glance, the random Latin words look like English. And somehow I managed to save my Lorem Ipsum version of the page over all the final draft copies I have.

Anyway... I'm working on finding the text that Brian wrote so I can get it back up on the site. If that fails, he's promised to write a new introduction. Until I can get it fixed, though, here's an excerpt from our birthparent letter that Brian wrote about me:

Let me tell you a little bit about Emily. Emily has a spunky personality. She loves having fun and is willing to try anything at least once. Emily is so very loving and caring. If she knows that she can help someone enjoy life a little bit better, she will do all she can to provide that help. Being the second child in a large family, Emily loves having kids around and knows exactly what to do to keep a child happy. She seems to attract kids. When we are in church, we often will have a kid come to visit us.

Emily loves to learn. Because of this, she speaks Spanish and Italian fluently and knows bits and pieces of many other languages. Because she speaks Spanish, she is often asked to translate. A few times a year she will go and help a kindergarten teacher in our ward translate parent teacher conferences. This is something that she really enjoys.

Emily loves music. She is always singing. She will often sing me songs that she makes up, just for fun. It amazes me that she can come up with words that rhyme so quickly. For the past year Emily has been teaching piano to two neighborhood kids. It is fun watching her get ready to teach. One of the children she teaches is mildly autistic. Emily has a lot of fun teaching the basics and sharing her love of music.

Hockey Opening Night

The hockey season is finally back! The Grizzlies played their home opener last Friday night. And we were able to kick off the season with a party for our whole family.

A couple of months ago, Howie told me he'd entered a contest to win a suite for opening night. He was sure his odds were good, and... well, they must have been... Because he won the suite.
We rounded up some of our family members to join us in the suite and celebrate. Some are seasoned hockey fans. Others were there for their first time and just learning the rules.

Howie did his best to get a picture that fit all of us into the frame. By the 10th take, we weren't smiling quite as nicely.

Our niece Bella has great hockey fan potential. When the game started she just knew that our team was trying to beat the "Alaskans". By the end, she'd paid enough attention to my explanations of what was happening that she could follow the game pretty well.

The Grizzlies didn't disappoint in this home game. Even though Alaska is a pretty tough team, the final score was 7-2 Grizzlies. 12 different Grizzlies scored during the game. They even got a bit fiesty by the end and we saw a couple of fights. It was a well played game and a very exciting way to start the season.


And, of course, with his black eye, Howie fully looked the part of a hockey fan. And, in true gameday fashion, he screamed so loud he lost his voice and got to teach Elder's Quorum two days later with half a voice.

Church Ball

You've heard before that church basketball is a dangerous sport, right?

Howie came home last Thursday night with this nice shiner. Course, it was less visible the first couple of days when this picture was taken... But still not bad for just an elbow, eh?

Course, usually he's the big guy other people are bouncing off of. They say it was an accident, but could it really have been revenge for broken toes or other church ball injuries?

Hoping to fill a dining room table

I hae a confession to make. Last weekend, Brian and I bought an enormous oak dining room table. Without the leaf, it seats 6-8 people. With the leaf... well, it's just big.

This may not seem like a typical purchase for a family of two. We don't exactly take up a lot of room. It seems even more impractical if you add in the cost of having to now get all new tablecloths because few of mine fit a table this large. But we just do things like this sometimes.

We are hoping and praying for the day when our family grows. Maybe even enough to fill our dining room table. And, even though it doesn't make much practical sense, we just can't help working to get ourselves ready for that day. Therefore, not only do we have a big dining room table. We've got a drawer full of cute little baby clothes. We've got a room set aside as a nursery. We collect children's books and toys and little fuzzy ducky slippers. I've picked out a crib. (Though I haven't bought it yet) and am working on figuring out what else a nursery needs. And, even though I often feel like I'm breaking some unspoken rule by being there, I just can't help wandering through the baby department when I've got a few extra minutes in a store.

In the meantime, we are lucky to have friends and family who help to play with our toys and eat at our table. One of our favorite traditions is inviting a family over for dinner and games. We love to share our home with our friends. So I guess that's a good reason to have a big table, too.

A bountiful harvest

Monday was kind of an interesting day. When I woke up in the morning I would never have imagined it... But at the same time, I wouldn't have traded it in, either.

Just as I finished getting dressed, the phone rang. It was a friend of mine from Howie's mission. She and I started writing when she was in his English class in Italy. Later, she visited Utah and I had the opportunity to show her around Temple Square at night. I've visited her once in Italy as well, but mostly we've just written letters and talked on the phone.

She called to let me know that she's in Florida visiting a friend for the next three months. This is especially significant because she has a cell phone with free nationwide calling, and we'll have the chance to talk more often. This is very good for my Italian and good for her English... not to mention the friendship.

We talked all morning while I did chores around the house. I also was able to finish a weekend-long job of refinishing and assembling a storage chest we bought at Ikea on Saturday.

Later in the day, Max and I got the chance to do some work in the garden and enjoy a perfect afternoon. The weather gets cooler every day and I needed to harvest as much as possible before it could get any colder. While I dug up carrots, Max enjoyed the chance to run around in the garden and eat whatever he wanted without fear of punishment. He really loves playing in the garden, but only in fall do I let him eat anything I haven't picked.

Of course, the tomato cages are his very favorite thing.

I decided to make chicken pot pie with the fruits of our harvest, so I put it all in a pot to start cooking while I taught piano lessons. As I finished the lesson, though, my mom and sister pulled up. They explained that they were in the area and my dad and other brothers were nearby, so they decided to come see if we'd like to go to dinner together for home evening.

So - I finished putting together my pot pie and put it in the fridge and we all went out to eat. With such a big family, we don't often get much time with just my parents and the siblings who are still at home... So we had a great time visiting and catching up on some of the exciting events in their lives. As an extra treat, mom and my sister stayed late and played Quiddler with me.

It was nice to have a day that was productive and spontaneous. The weather was perfect. And I got to do some of my favorite things with my favorite people.

Now... while I was getting Max's picture from my camera phone, I found this other of Maxie that I just had to throw in.

Every once in a while, I leave him on his cage with the door open while I run quick errands. He doesn't usually go anywhere... But every once in a while he gets startled or adventurous an I have to go find him when I get home. Finding him has gotten quite easy lately, though. Most often, I'll find that he decided he was tired and flew off his cage, climbed the stairs, and climbed our bedspread to take a nap on Brian's pillow. Have I mentioned that this bird is spoiled? Anyway, just had to share the picture.

7 random facts

My visiting teaching companion and I were doing a bit of a get-to-know you thing this week. I mentioned that I'd studied languages in college. She confessed a taste for an uncommon food (that I won't reveal in a blog, because that would be just plain mean.)

Along those lines, I thought it might be fun to share a few random facts about ourselves with you here.

About Emily
1) I have studied Spanish, Italian, American Sign Language, French, German, Polish, and Japanese at various times in my life. Of those, I am fluent in Spanish and Italian and can get by in ASL.
2) I've only had one cavity, and it was in a baby tooth.
3) I don't like maple syrup on my pancakes. But I love it on french toast and cornbread.
4) I skipped the first grade. Because I was younger than the rest of my class, I couldn't date or drive until halfway through my junior year of high school and I was 17 when I started college.
5) For my eighth birthday, my grandparents took me on a trip to Canada. My first choice was Mexico, but when they didn't bite I picked the only other out of country destination offered to me.
6) When I was a newlywed, I played the organ in our church. It was an antique pipe organ with pipes that sometimes would get stuck in the middle of sacrament meeting. I had one lesson on how to work it, but I was the only one in the ward who could play.
7) I got my first bee sting this year, at age 28.

About Brian
(I haven't asked permission to post these, so we'll hope I don't get in trouble.)

1) Before his mission, he was studying business. He still loves reading books on marketing and business.
2) He'll do just about anything for a chocolate chip cookie. Especially an applesauce chocolate chip cookie.
3) He's never set foot on the campus of the university that he graduated from. He took all his classes at a satellite program or online. When graduation rolled around, we figured we shouldn't ruin his record and threw a barbecue to celebrate instead of the cap and gown ceremony.
4) He broke off his two front teeth when he threw a wrench through a basketball hoop and caught it with his face.
5) He enjoys mowing the lawn.
6) He was in 1st grade when he wrote his first computer program. I've lost count of how many computers we own.
7) He doesn't like pickles. (Which means all the more pickles for me!)

Hockey Weekend

The past weekend was spent being avid hockey fans.

The activities started on Friday night. Our local ECHL hockey team had an scrimage that was open to the public. Chicken and I attended a practice last year and really enjoyed getting to see the players before they were in games. Not to mention that it was the first time in 5 months that I could see hockey in person.

Saturday was a season ticket holder event. We were told that the coach would introduce his players, we could watch practice, and then skate with the players. We arrived a few minutes late, I'm not sure if the players were actually introduced, but oh well. It was fun to watch more practice. Then for the first time in many, many years for me, we put on ice skates, and got out on the ice.

While there, we decided we needed tickets with the team's mascot. We skated up and asked if we could take a picture with him. He wanted the camera. He took a picture, then we each took turns.

Back in July I donated some money to the MDA one of the percs of that was 6 invitations to skate with the team. We invited some friends and family. We had a lot of fun skating. I got up the courage to talk to one of the players. One of our favorite players to watch is Kazuma Takahashi. I just chatted with him about his trip home to Japan over the summer. All in all it was a fun time on the ice.

Chicago

About a year ago, we came across a great little promotion, that long story short, gave us a free flight to Chicago. We were finally able to redeem that flight a couple of weeks ago and had a great little escape together.

(Photo: Me at Navy Pier with Chicago Skyline in the background.)

I'm not one to ever pass up an opportunity to go back to Chicago, since that's where I served my mission. However, we decided this trip to take some time and actually experience the city a bit. (Last time we went back, we spent all our time visiting with people I knew from my mission and barely even saw the city.)

So we took the first couple of days in the city itself. We did a few of those things I always wanted to do but never got to as a missionary... like going to the top of the Sears Tower, riding the ferris wheel at Navy Pier and attending a Chicago White Sox game. We went to several museums from the Chicago Institute of Art to the Shedd Aquarium to the Museum of Science and Industry, experiencing everything from Monet to sharks to a historic german submarine and the cutest little baby chicks. In a bit of a splurge, Howie bought tickets for us to see the play Wicked at the Ford Oriental Theatre which was a definitely memorable experience.




(Photos: Us at the Sox Game. Howie in the Art Museum. Us outside the Shedd Aquarium).

Since we were in Chicago, we of course had to sample some of the famous local fare. Dining ranged from italian beef to deep dish pizza at Gino's East to burgers in a very famous little underground (literally) restaurant called Billy Goat's. (This place was great! You walked in and they told you exactly what you were going to order. Your only option was to upsize it.)

(Photo: Toasted Ravioli at Gino's East)

We couldn't have picked worse weather for our trip. We were there on the rainiest day ever recorded in Chicagoland. Fortunately, for our two days on foot in the city, it only misted on us. (Although we were never fully dry). The real rain didn't start until the day that we headed out of the city to visit one of the areas in the suburbs where I'd been a missionary. But then, oh how it rained!!! 6 inches of rain fell in a single day. Traffic was awful! Lakes and rivers were overflowing! We got lucky that for that day's drive we didn't end up stranded or really far diverted.

(Photo: Howie at the funhouse mirrors at Navy Pier. Notice how gray and wet it was!)

Sunday we went to church in the ward where I served the longest as a missionary. It was fun to see old friends and catch up. And after church, we got to go to dinner with one of my very favorite people and best friends from my mission, a woman from Bolivia who I taught and translated for during the first half of my mission. She'd been through some pretty big life changes and had dropped off of the ward's radar after moving... I was really lucky to find her!

(Photo: Brian, me, my friend, and her husband)

We had a GREAT visit. She made me her absolutely scrumptiously wonderful empanadas and we got to share pictures and stories. I was amazed at how much her kids have grown! I'm sure my mission wasn't that long ago!

And then, it was almost time to come home. We spent our last day in the city, mostly, navigating around flooded roads. The DuPage river had overflown its boundaries and had flooded streets everywhere! Our first few plans for the day took us a bit too close to the river, and thus were out of the question. But... because of that we ended up deciding to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which we'd only heard of. We didn't know where it was or what it was really, but it turned out to be a really great end to a really great trip!

(Photo: Howie playing with the beavers at the zoo.)

Finally, it was time to go home. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and... since the flight had been free... Brian decided to upgrade us to first class for just a small fee. That made for a very comfortable flight home and a meal so good I could barely move.

We really love our little adventures together. They give us a chance to really enjoy one another's company and learn about ourselves and each other as we explore a place that's new to both of us. I'd do it again in a heartbeat!